My Blog

I’m Done!

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I just this minute finished writing the final draft of MR. MONK AND THE BLUE FLU, my third book in the series, and had to tell somebody (everybody in my house is asleep already). I’m a week ahead of my deadline, so I will probably set the manuscript aside for a day or two and then read it again to make sure everything tracks. Or I may simply turn it in and be done with it.  Regardless, I won’t do anything with it until Monday.

The timing is perfect, because Bill Rabkin and I are about to start writing a freelance script for a hot new TV series (more on that later) and I won’t have to worry about finishing the book, too. I do have to start thinking about my eighth DIAGNOSIS MURDER book, though, which is due in three-and-a-half months…

So tomorrow I’ll do my little book-completion ritual. I’ll put my Murder Book (my binder of notes, outlines, photos, etc. related to the book) in a box in the closet and clean up my office, which tends to go to hell while I’m writing.

We’re Thinking Of You, Ed

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Eg
Please join me in wishing Ed Gorman the very best in his on-going battle with cancer. Today, Ed  suspended his blog to focus his energy on his writing and his health:

This will be my last post until at least fall. And maybe my last post
ever. Simply put, I have to get ready for my stay at Mayo in June and
that, along with finishing my novel, will have to be my primary
concerns. Thanks for all your support. My health doesn’t seem to have
changed but my oncologist says I should pay it more attention than I do.

We’ll miss your daily doses of wit, political commentary and author interviews… but we’ll eagerly await your new novel.

Joe Konrath: Anti-Christ?

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Edwardredwin
I got this email from a very successful and critically acclaimed mystery novelist I know (who gave me permission to post this as long as I removed his or her name):

How can you be friends with Joe Konrath? He’s the anti-Christ.  In his own way, he is as bad or worse than Lori Prokop. The advice he gives to aspiring writers is just terrible and, worse, he’s doing everything he can to undermine his fellow professionals. How, you ask? He’s perpetuating the myth that you should devote all or part of your advance to promotion, that you should devote yourself to making sure that the publisher makes money (even if it costs you).  What he’s doing is legitimizing the damaging corporate mindset that authors should pay for their own promotion without any investment or reimbursement from the publisher.  We’re supposed to live off our advances, not kick them back to the publisher for advertising and promotion. Joe’s latest moronic blog post was so infuriating I almost put my fist into my laptop screen. Of course his publisher loves him. But professional writers should fear him. He’s cancer.

After getting this email, I had to scoot right over to Joe’s blog to see what had pissed off my usually low-key buddy so much.  I think this is it:

My writing philosophy is simple: Make money for your publisher.

I do this by not only doing a lot of self-promotion, but by also
considering my audience even before I sit down to write a single word.

This means compromises. This means understanding the system writing
exists in (the publishing business) and weighing it against the many
reasons I wanted to become a writer.

Successful writers seem to understand this balance, and the
trade-offs required. They realize that their books are products as well
as art.

By ‘successful’ I mean that they are making money for their
publisher. You don’t have to be an NYT bestseller to do this. All you
have to do is earn out your advance.

You can earn out your advance by doing a lot of self-promotion, by
working closely with your publisher, by spending a lot of your advance
money on marketing, and by writing good books.

Let me start by saying I really like Joe. I think he’s funny, gracious, multi-talented,  and genuinely interested in helping his fellow writers. We don’t always agree, but that’s okay by me — I don’t always agree with my wife, either, but we still love each other.  Sure, I disagree with Joe from time to time, but that doesn’t diminish my respect for him or how much I enjoy his company.

I’ve always been awed by the incredible time and energy Joe puts into promoting his books. He visited something like 200 booksstores for "drop in" signings  during a promotional tour which, I believe, was paid for by his publisher. He does an amazing job getting his work noticed and I applaud him for it.

That said, I don’t agree with his frequently expressed philosophy that your job as an author is to make money for your publisher and  pump your advance into promotion. It’s nice if you’re in the financial position to do that (it’s what I did with many of my books), but most authors aren’t. They write to support their families and, from a business stand-point, it isn’t cost-effective for them to donate a significant portion of their advances to their publisher.

Joe frequently talks about how important it is to promote your books and assure that each title earns out.  For those not in the biz, "earning out"  simply means that you’ve sold enough books to earn back the advance against royalties that the publisher paid you. That doesn’t mean that once you hit that point you are making tons of  money, it just makes it more likely the publisher will buy your next book.

I agree that authors need to promote themselves and their work…and that you need to earn out if you’re going to survive in this business. But the publishers have a responsibility to do more than merely publish and distribute the book. They also have to advertise and promote. They can’t expect the author to shoulder most of that burden.

Or can they? More and more, it seems, publishers are  expecting authors to use their advances for promotion, pay for their own websites, and send themselves on tour … and if they don’t, they are seen as being "unsupportive" and "difficult to work with." And that is scary, especially with the midlist disappearing and advances shrinking. The advance is supposed to support an author while he works, not act as a replacement for corporate spending on advertising and promotion…it is NOT a replacement for the publisher’s advertising budget.

But if authors like my friend Joe keep advocating that  it’s the author’s responsibility to devote some or all of their advance for promotion, and authors and publishers buy into that thinking, we will see publishers spending less on advertising and promotion and earnings for authors shrinking even more.

I’m NOT saying authors shouldn’t promote their work — God knows, I certainly work hard to promote myself (take this blog, for instance). But I have to admit that Joe’s  "What have you done for your publisher today?" attitude often makes me cringe.  He makes up for it my making me laugh a lot, and with his many keen insights into the biz, so it evens out.

Your thoughts?

UPDATE:  Joe has responded in the comments below and also shares his views on his blog.

Read more

HEIST Pulled Off

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TVSquad reports that HEIST has been axed. No surprise. What is surprising is that Mark Cullen, the creator of the show left a comment on the blog about it, confirming the cancellation and sharing his frustrations:

Yes, the show’s run was cut from 13 episodes to 6. For those of you who
liked it — thanks so much for watching. It was supposed to be fun and
we were just finding our legs when we were cancelled. For those of you
who didn’t – Why did you watch it? What kind of free time do you have?
Also, you should try creating a network show sometime. Not easy. NBC
will be showing three more episodes of the show, and I’d be surprised
if you don’t think it’s a top-tier show at the end of it’s run.

Writers Are Suckers

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You won’t find anybody more gullible, more eager to be scammed, than aspiring writers. Of course, aspiring writers could avoid being taken by simply following one rule: You don’t pay anyone to get published. They pay you. But, apparently, that simple rule is too complex for some wanna-be authors to comprehend. Novelist J. Steven York ponders this problem in a lengthy, excellent post, on his blog:

There is no more gullible, self-delusional, fog-headed being on the
planet than an aspiring writer. So predictable and common are their
delusions that an entire industry of crooks, con-men and scam artists
exists to exploit them, and such a sweet deal it is for them, too. Not
only are most of their scams perfectly legal, their marks are actually grateful to
be scammed! It doesn’t get much better for a predator than that. It’s
like the entire herd of antelope crowding around the lion shouting,
"Eat me! No, eat me!"

It’s so true. Just read some of the mail I get. Just look at the people who’ve applied to Lori Prokop’s Book Millionaire scam, or who still flock to PublishAmerica. One PA author posted this comment on my blog the other day:

To critics of PA read this:
       1) I dont care if PA keeps 100% of my royalties because they risked their money on my book.
       2) I dont care if my books never appear on the shelve of a brick and mortar book store.
       3) I totally understand if PA requires a seven contract because as mentioned before they put up their money for my book,
        When PA accepted my book, it was the happiest day in my life.

How can anyone feel sympathy for someone so deluded? Not so long ago, a woman wrote to me about how excited her daughter was to get a contract for her book from Tate Publishing. What was Tate offering? Pay us $4000 and we will publish your book. When I told her that Tate is a vanity press, and that it wasn’t an "offer," but a sales soliciation, she lamented that her daughter would be crushed because she was so excited that a publisher had accepted her work.  To me, that is the perfect example of  the "scam me please!" mindset of so many aspiring authors. Here’s the reality, as J. Steven York states it:

If you don’t get paid, and I mean up-front, then it isn’t a sale.
People who don’t have money to pay you generally don’t have money
because they aren’t selling books.

You’d think that would be obvious. Well, to many aspiring writers, the obvious is something to ignore. They don’t want to know that they aren’t really being published when their book comes out from Authorhouse. They don’t want to face reality because it will destroy the flimsy fantasy they are living. Or, as York put it:

Most of the writers getting scammed aren’t dumb. They’re nice,
intelligent people who sincerely want to be writers, and have simply
lost their way. Most of them are so invested in whatever flavor of
Kool-aid they’ve swallowed that they not only can’t see the truth, they
don’t want to. Yet most of them are aware, on some level, that
something is wrong. That’s usually why they write me. They have
concerns. They have questions. Just not enough to wake up and look
around. The correspondence, in antelope-terms, usually goes something
like this: "This lion has actually agreed to take me on! Right now,
it’s chewing on my leg. And it’s great! Although, I’m concerned about
the bleeding. And the dismemberment. But really, it’s good! It’s great!
Uh, should there be so much pain? But I’m good!"

It’s sad.

What is Success?

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Novelist Martha O’Connor, author of the terrific novel BITCH POSSE,  is musing about the meaning of success.  Here are some excerpts from Martha’s post:

I’ve been having some interesting discussions with other writers on the issue: what is success? Some see success as selling a bunch of copies of one’s book, and producing a book a year. Some see success as something less quantifiable—a personal best, if you will, an art-for-art’s sake kind of endeavor.

My
view is this: If a writer who consistently remains on bestseller lists
is automatically a better writer than one who doesn’t, then that means
Dan Brown is a better writer than Marilynne Robinson. In which case, I have to drink bleach.

If quality is all about monetary success, then Britney Spears is a musical genius. If success=money, then Coldplay is actually the best band in the world right now.  GUH.

Think of it this way, if artistry were reflected by sales then McDonald’s would be the VERY BEST RESTAURANT in the world. Who needs filet mignon or lobster bisque when you can have a flippin’ QUARTER POUNDER?

         

Blog Suicide

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Being too candid on your blog about the happenings in your professional life can have serious personal and financial consequences…which is why I don’t talk much about my current projects (beyond blatant self-promotion). The anecdotes, rants, and observations that I post here are not about people I’m working with today or might work with in the future, much to the relief of my wife, my writing partner and my two agents, all of whom keep a close eye on my blogging.

I have seen too many people I know commit blog suicide by trashing their current employers or co-workers  (studios, networks, producers, editors, publishers, etc) or by revealing a little too much about their own insecurities, ambivalence or creative difficulties regarding whatever projects they are working on.

But you don’t need a blog to get in trouble. You can commit the same sort of career suicide by saying the wrong thing in an interview with a print or broadcast reporter (I’ve learned that lesson, to a smaller degree, the hard way myself on too many occasions).

Today, novelist Jayne Ann Krentz’s literary agent Steve Axelrod tackles this subject in an interesting post on his client’s blog. His post is titled "Why Smart Agents Don’t Blog." Here are some excerpts:

About two
months ago Jayne kindly invited me to contribute to this blog (“Just
something short from an agent’s perspective….”)—and, though I quickly
agreed, I’ve been dragging my feet ever since […]

But every
time I’d start to think about which great story to start with, I would
think of Dave Wirtschafter—and I’d come to a dead halt.

Wirtschafter,
the president of the William Morris Agency, didn’t blog, but about a
year ago, he let himself be interviewed for a long, candid profile in
the New Yorker. It made for great reading—it was the real deal—but his
candor is widely believed to have cost the agency at least two major
stars, Halle Berry and Sarah Michelle Geller, as well as a major
director, etc.

A few months
after the New Yorker profile ran, W Magazine interviewed the
now-retired Sue Mengers (“Hollywood’s first superagent”) and she has
some choice words for Wirtschafter (“Dave Something—Schmuck, I
think….”) but then she goes on to say something I thought was pretty
perceptive: “It’s very tempting for an agent to give interviews. We
want a little credit, so it’s hard to say no. But you should.”

And
I’m starting to believe that what’s true for agents granting interviews
is doubly true for agents blogging. Agents should just say No.

Blogs by Fictional People

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Monk’s assistant Natalie has a blog on the USA Network site. She is, of course, a fictional character and her blog is written by me. But that’s just one example of what’s fast-becoming a rampant marketing practice — blogs by fictional characters. TV critic Chuck Barney at the Contra Costa Times writes about this new trend and some bloggers are carrying on the discussion.

UPDATE: USA Today has an article today about TV shows with blogs that also touches on the "fictional blogger" angle.

What is the Appeal?

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There are three actors that the networks continually cast as TV series leads — despite the fact that the shows these guys star in consistently bomb. I’m talking, of course, about Steven Eckholdt, Christopher Gorham, and Eric Balfour (the list used to include Jason Gedrick and Ivan Sergei, but it seems the networks have finally wised up to them).

Steveneckholdt2
Eckholdt has just been cast as one of the stars of the CBS pilot SPLIT DECISION despite a string of bombs like HALF & HALF, MY BIG FAT GREEK LIFE, GRAPEVINE, and IT’S LIKE YOU KNOW.  He’s apparently the kiss-of-death for any series…but the networks keep going back to him again and again. What is it about him that makes him so darn castable?

Christophergorham_jake20_240
Gorham’s CBS sitcom OUT OF PRACTICE has just been shelved…making this his fourth flop series in a row, following MEDICAL INVESTIGATION, JAKE 2.0, and ODYSSEY 5. What do you want to bet he’ll show up in  yet another series next season? Networks keep betting on him…and losing. So why do they continue?

Ericbalfour
Balfour is currently one of the stars of the ratings-challenged CONVICTION, but his past series flops include SEX LIES AND SECRETS, HAWAII, and VERITAS. Casting directors obviously fell in love with him for his guest-starring role on SIX FEET UNDER, but does that make him a series lead? So far, the evidence seems to be  NO.

What is it, exactly, that casting directors see in these guys? And how
much longer will they keeping getting starring roles in pilots before someone decides that they are never going to be the  next George Clooney… or even Robert Urich?